Blessed is the man who always fears the LORD, but he who hardens his heart falls into trouble (Proverbs 28:14).

People make mistakes all the time.  All of us.  We think stupid things, say stupid things, do stupid things.  And they're not just morally-neutral "stupid things."  We genuinely sin and miss the mark for how God intended life to be lived.  As a pastor, I get to deal with a lot of personal mistakes, as the people in my church attempt to live by faith.  And over the years, I've learned to react less to the sin itself than to the attitude towards the sin.  In essence, I look at the relative hardness or softness of heart in any given situation and base my response to the situation on that hardness or softness of heart.  At the end of the day, I don't really care who you've slept with, or what you've smoked, or how much you stole.  What I care about, first and foremost, is what your attitude towards that sin might be.  We all make mistakes; we all sin.  But does that sin put a holy fear of the LORD in you?  Or does it cause you to harden your heart?

The truth is that we all make mistakes (myself included).  We all blow it sometimes (myself included).  Sometimes, of course, there are consequences to those mistakes, and it may take awhile before full restoration is achieved -- but God's grace is immediate.  It doesn't matter what the sin is.  The Bible says that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).  If we ask God for forgiveness and turn our hearts towards him, he will remove our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).  There's nothing that can separate us from God's love:  "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).  I believe this with all my heart -- and I am personally grateful for this with all my heart!

The trouble comes when someone is not looking for grace but for vindication.  When someone tells me that they're dealing with a particular area of sin, but that actually -- really, when it actually comes down to it, they're not completely sure that it really is a sin after all... and yeah, come to think of it, perhaps there's no change of heart is necessary at all... These are the beginning signs of hard-heartedness.  And when it comes to serving as a pastor, I've learned to be way more concerned about hard-heartedness than bad decisions or bad actions.

When hard-heartedness starts to set in, there's very little that I (or any other human) can do to break through and help lead someone towards repentence.  Not only is it ineffective to try and hammer through someone else's hard-heartedness; it's unwise and incorrect of us to put ourselves in that place of judgment!  It's never my place -- even as someone with a position of spiritual authority in a church -- to "hammer" someone else.  If a person is in the wrong, I prefer to let God show that to him.  I can, in the meantime, develop personal and pastoral boundaries, to control the damages a bit and reduce the number of other people who might become affected.  But it really comes down to each individual keeping their heart soft and hearing from God for their particular situation.  In benediction, I give you the words of a Petra power-ballad (back from the glory-days of the 1980s Christian hair band):  "Don't let your heart grow hardened; don't let your love grow cold.  May it always stay so childlike; may it never grow to old.  Don't let your heart grow hardened; may you always know the cure:  Keep it broken before Jesus.  Keep it thankful, meek, and pure."